WUSHU TRAINING IN XI'AN
25 March 2009 22:50
Youth Experiences: Wushu training in Xi’an
By Salim Kassam
The Holy Prophet (S.A.W) has said, “Seek knowledge, even it must means you must travel to China” (paraphrasing). So I did…
After reflecting on my first week on wushu training in the city of Xi’an in China (also the home of the Terra Cotta warriors), I can sum it all up in one word – ‘madness’. Deciding that my gap year was getting a bit too boring, I wanted to mix things up and learn some martial arts. However Harrow Leisure Centre seemed a bit too familiar and local, plus I would have to change buses to get there, so I thought why not go to the source of fighting (not Team Zanjeer in the SJ League) but China!
In just a short month, I strung together a rough plan of how the trip would work, convinced a friend to come with me and got my visa (2 days before the trip!). As we left London, all we had prepared were a sheet of salaat times, a prayer mat and a compass… oh and a month’s supply of Batchelors Cup a Soup. Feeling no martial arts preparation were required, despite warnings from several people, we boarded our flight at Heathrow and were on our way.
After a 27-hour journey to Beijing with a stop over in Dubai, we conquered the Great Wall of China and then boarded a sleeper train to Xian. This was to be our home for the next 3 weeks, where we would live in a barely adequate hotel in the city centre, and take the bus to the wushu school, which was founded by a Muslim martial arts champion. Unknown to me before the trip, we needed to change buses here too, so maybe I would have been better off at Harrow Leisure Centre!
The school itself was reminiscent of a scene out of Prison Break (see picture). There was a large courtyard with basketball courts, bland buildings where the inmates, I mean students lived, leafless trees, and the fowl stench of sewage hanging over us as we ran laps every morning and afternoon.
Despite our clear lack of physical training, we took it upon ourselves to ensure that we were MENTALLY prepared for anything that the school would throw at us. I had loaded up my laptop with all the great martial arts movies I could think of such as The Last Samurai, Hero, Fearless and we also made time to re-watch Remember the Titans, all in the hope of inspiring us to unleash the true warriors inside us… sadly this was not the case.
Our first day at the school proved to be brutally challenging. After being sized up by gangs of boys, who shouted the little English that they knew out of their windows, it was time for our warm up. We witnessed pain that should not be experienced by any free man. As we screamed in agony, our teacher Mr Liu pulled out legs further apart whilst we were being made to attempt the splits. The rest of our class, a bunch of extremely talented teenagers, laughed as they knew our pain all too well from their childhood.
We were then made to pick the weapon that we would be learning to use for the next 3 weeks. This instantly brought back memories of watching the cartoon series Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and my favourite of them all Donatello. Without a second thought I chose the staff, as the pizza-loving turtle used to use.
After an intense 3 hour morning session of painful stretches and learning staff and fist combinations, lunch could not come sooner, and on the menu was rice, with some sort of vegetables and meat. Thankfully, as it is a Muslim school, all the food is halal, and although we challenge ourselves daily to try and identify the food, it must be said that it is very tasty, and also fun to eat because we get to use chopsticks.
The afternoon session was intentionally made less intense, and we were placed in a class of 4-9 year olds. Despite the abuse being hurled at us as we ran with our class around the courtyard by the older kids, it was vital that we were in their group as we are taught the cores of wushu and taken through the more basic moves improving our stance and the all round technical aspects of our training.
This routine carried on through the week, and despite the growing pain in all our muscles, it was going well until Thursday… I opened my big mouth and arranged for us to spar with some of the students. Stupidly I had forgotten that you were required to fight someone of your own size, so as they gave me my head guard, gloves and body guard, a near 6ft Chinese guy, built like a brick wall steps in. He decided he did not need a head guard or body guard. 10 minutes later I knew why. Let’s just leave it at that.
The weekend was definitely a well earned rest, to lick my wounds, and prepare for another gruelling week of wushu, here is just a sample of what we have done… I say we, it’s really just our class
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-04_hfgXSfY
